FAQ5 questions
Skills taxonomy and maintenance
One name per skill
How much work is it to maintain a skills taxonomy?
Maintaining a skills taxonomy takes a few hours a month for its owners, and it is the cost most vendor demonstrations leave out. The recurring work is merging duplicates that mean the same thing, adding skills that arrive with new client work or technology, and retiring the ones nobody has claimed in a year. The MuchSkills skills database itself is curated and updated by MuchSkills, so your owners only maintain your organisation's own additions. Skip it for a year and people stop trusting the taxonomy, the same failure as the spreadsheet you replaced.
What is the difference between a skills taxonomy and a competency framework?
A skills taxonomy is the structured vocabulary of skills your organisation recognises, organised into families so that "project management" means one thing everywhere. A competency framework describes the behaviour expected at a level, usually tied to a role or grade, and is written for progression and assessment. The taxonomy tells you what exists; the framework tells you what is expected of whom. In MuchSkills, role lists combine the two: skills from the taxonomy with the level each role requires.
Who decides which skills go in the taxonomy?
Decide how taxonomy decisions get made, and put a simple governance structure around it. We recommend one or two named owners, or a small group, who collect feedback from everyone who uses the data and take the decisions. In consultancies the group should include bid and delivery leads, because the taxonomy has to match the words in client requirements, RFPs and tenders. What matters is that the owners understand the overall structure of the taxonomy and make the calls, so it does not grow department by department into five names for one skill and no way to compare across teams. Standardise first, then customise at the edges.
How many skills should a role profile have?
A MuchSkills role profile typically holds 30 to 40 skills. Technical roles that use many tools and technologies can reach about 60, because each technology the role uses counts as a skill. Within that, mark the 10 to 15 skills that are close to required, in some roles up to 20, as prioritised skills; the rest make up the role's wider skill set. Required certificates sit alongside. Onboarding builds role profiles with you from the MuchSkills skills database, one role at a time.
What is the difference between a skill and a competency?
A skill is a specific ability a person can apply, such as Python, negotiation or welding, and it can be rated on a scale. A competency describes expected behaviour in a role, usually bundling several skills with judgement and context, such as managing senior stakeholders in client workshops. Skills are easier to search, compare and staff on; competencies are better for describing progression. MuchSkills works at skill level and lets role profiles combine skills into what each role expects.